Beneath the Mountains
by meilimingzi
Summary: What if Anna and Nikolai meet years later in Russia? What if they live I the same city and run into each other? Could this be their second chance they didn't have in London under the watchful and dangerous eyes of Semyon and Kirill?


_Hello, everyone! This is my second story in this fandom, and it has been floating my mind for a long time. Whenever I see the movie, I always think what if? Well...this is my answer to that what if. Please review! I need feedback!_

The road is rough and worn from the train station to the old house. The mountains rise up in the background like a looming barrier between where she is and where she came from. Christine is quiet beside her. This is her first time to see her great grandparents, Anna's grandparents. Anna's grandparents are nearing their late 80's and need to be taken care of, but her uncles are both too busy and have families of their own. Anna, who has been layed off from her job following the hospital going through economic hardship. So she and Christine decided to go and lice with her grandparents and help them all she can.

Helen, her mother, was not at all happy about the arrangement. Nothing was more frightening to Helen than her daughter moving thousands of miles away with almost no Russian language skill to speak of. But Christine had thought it was a great opportunity and Anna secretly always wanted to see her fathers homeland for herself.

As Anna looked over at Christine, she felt no fear for Christine. Christine was 10 and would learn the language and be her old, socialite self again in no time. Anna on the other hand was worried for herself. It was at moments like these, when she had nothing else to occupy her mind and her ears heard Russian everywhere like the buzzing of bees nearly. completely incoherent. It was moments like these when she would think about him. Wasn't he from this region? She vaguely remembered him saying his family lived in the shadow of the mountains in Yekaterinburg. Or maybe not. She didn't know whether she hoped he did or didn't. She remembered his voice and his hand as it brushed against hers in that fast food restaurant. She remembered what her uncle said about him, about how he was nice and very kind and urged her uncle to think leave when he was ordered to kill him. Like he said, he was ordered to kill him, but instead gave him a first class ticket to Edinburgh.

Her uncle had come with her. He was sitting on the other side of her, comfortably conversing for what Anna was sure was the first time in her life. What do you know, Stepan is charming if the other person speaks Russian, too. They were being driven by a taxi driver from the train station to an old house in the country where her grandparents had always lived, even when her father was a boy. The house was somewhat decrepit and left to the decaying of age. Anna decided that would be the first order of business.

Once everyone had settled down, Anna made the decision that the house was sorely lacking food supplies. So she and Christine walked to the local market outside the city, about a five miles. As Anna stood picking out the vegetables that would be necessary for dinner and breakfast the next morning, she noticed and older man staring at her. Her stared at her with a strange look on his face as trying to determine if he knew her or not. He looked hauntingly familiar. Almost startlingly so. The man had slicked back hair that must have at one time been dark. It was now silver with dark strands running through it. His features were sharp, and angular but it was his fingers that were the most frightening. There were distinct tattoos on his hands, the same tattoos he had all those years ago. Anna quickly bought the food and hurried away with Christine, never losing the feeling that the man was still staring with that strange look on his face.

_Please review! And if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them, because quite frankly I think I know where I want this story to go, but there are a lot of holes I am going to have to work through. So if you like it and have ideas, tell me about them and I will see if I can weave them into the story. Thanks!_


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